Hundreds on dirt bikes, ATVs disrupt South Florida traffic

South Florida has had its share of rush-hour drama — a baby needing CPR, a man threatening to jump off an overpass and a man shooting several people on Florida’s Turnpike.“We gonna catwalk, we going to one hand we are going to step on our seats we going to run every light there is to run,” one rider told CBS4’s Travell Eiland. “Those who do this, you don’t have any respect, no respect for what we have fought for for all these years,” said Florida Highway Patrol Officer Joe Sanchez. While law enforcement officers are aware of the situation a Highway patrol spokesperson said they have tried to do traffic stops but some of the bikers pull off. Hundreds of people riding dirt bikes and ATVs sped across Miami-Dade and Broward’s major roadways — I-95, US 441, Northwest Seventh Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard — disrupting rush-hour traffic.

Troopers can’t case after them because it’s against department policy to give chase for a traffic violation and they fear pursuing would endanger more lives. Joseph Gebara was heading north on US 441 at about 5:15 p.m when “like everyone else I heard a rumbling and there went at least 60-70 bikes in an out of traffic, popping wheelies.” Police agencies were left baffled — unsure why the bikers were out there. By Tuesday morning, however, the FHP had made three arrests and reported one minor crash on Florida’s Turnpike in connection with the riders flooding South Florida’s streets. We have no idea who they are, we have no idea where all of these people came from, we don’t know where it initiated from.” Sanchez said reports began coming about the ragtag group just after the Martin Luther King Jr. parade Monday morning that ran along Northwest 54th Street in Miami. Milo Alexander, a rider from Atlanta, told the Miami Herald that a band of riders converged in South Florida from across the East Coast, including New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Another hashtag, #JusticeForRell, references the unsolved murder of a popular dirt biker Kyrell “Dirt Bike Rell” Tyler of Philadelphia. “We chose that one because a lot of people look at us and think we’re violent people because we’re riding kind of rough on the street,” he said. “But this is nonviolent between all of us. That’s our new movement, just as MLK marched in the 1960s.” Baltimore filmmaker Kerry Jones, who goes by “Shadyflic” online, said she’s been documenting bike culture for years. Jones said leaders from cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York had been planning this ride for months through social media networks, communicating via Instagram with members of Miami Bikelife, a loosely organized local collective. In the late afternoon, television helicopters captured images of several riders passing through Miami streets toward downtown — some riding on sidewalks, into oncoming traffic and around cars.